Here kitty kitty: Are there any great small cat exhibits?

DavidBrown

DavidBrown

Well-Known Member
15+ year member
Small cat species seem to be ubiquitous in zoos, but unfortunately so do pretty bad exhibits for them. Specialized small cat exhibits at the Denver, Cincinnati, and Brookfield Zoos have gotten scathing reviews here from discerning cat fans like Arizona Docent.

I can see three major potential problems with designing small cat exhibits that showcase them well for visitors and provide enriching, adequately spacious areas for the cats:
1. These species tend to be secretive and don't want to be seen by people.
2. Many of them are nocturnal.
3. They are cats and sleep 98% of the time (value approximate)

By photos and reputation the Singapore Zoo fishing cat exhibit seems pretty nice. The San Diego Zoo has a pretty nice fishing cat exhibit too, but the cats are still hard to see and are rarely active.

Are there any good cat exhibits out there that have figured out how to provide features to make the cats active for visitors and also provide good homes for the cats?

Small cats are important parts of several ecosystems. Are there any good exhibits that interpret cats well and leave visitors appreciating how important and cool they are? I've not encountered any exhibits like this that I can recall. When small cat species are visible they are truly beautiful animals, even the garden-variety bobcat that seems to be one of the most common species found in U.S. zoos.

Perhaps small cat species are best appreciated in animal shows at zoos? I have seen impressive displays of cats like servals and bobcats jumping in animal behavior demonstrations in animal shows.
 
In the UK there are 2 species that do quite well generally, lynx and serval. And of the smaller cat species these are the 2 that I have the least trouble seeing; lynx especially appear to be quite showy.
It also depends on what you're classing as a "small cat" since technically everything outside of Panthera comes under that heading and there are a great many average to great exhibits for cheetah, snow leopard, clouded leopard and puma. None of these species are actually that small though!
 
My favourite is the fishing cat enclosures at Port Lympne. The zoo is built on steep south-facing slope, and a shallow stream flows through the eastern enclosure - I have sometimes seen kittens playing in it. This enclosure is viewed from the footpath, but there is a shelter with a seat and a viewing window for the western enclosure. Both enclosures have wooden shelters at the back and are fairly thickly planted with shrubs like elder and shorter grass at the front. The cats are often seen lying on carefully placed dead branches or sunny spots on the grass.

Alan
 
The fishing cat exhibit at the Night Safari (Singapore) is the best small cat exhibit I have seen, although the other small cat enclosures (servals, Asiatic golden cat, clouded leopard) there were also very good.

Most other small cat enclosures I've seen tend to be mesh cages with a few ledges and maybe some bushes and rocks. The cats sit on the ledge, usually as far out of sight as possible. Some lynx and serval enclosures, which are more often open-topped, are much more natural, and work better for these species which appear more diurnally active anyway. Auckland Zoo has a great serval enclosure, which is viewed on two sides from across a moat.
 
DavidBrown said:
Small cat species seem to be ubiquitous in zoos, but unfortunately so do pretty bad exhibits for them. Specialized small cat exhibits at the Denver, Cincinnati, and Brookfield Zoos have gotten scathing reviews here from discerning cat fans like Arizona Docent.
Click to expand...

I do not think Brookfield Zoo's cat exhibits are bad. The are indoors but are good sized.
 
DavidBrown said:
Small cat species seem to be ubiquitous in zoos, but unfortunately so do pretty bad exhibits for them. Specialized small cat exhibits at the Denver, Cincinnati, and Brookfield Zoos have gotten scathing reviews here from discerning cat fans like Arizona Docent.
Click to expand...

I do not think Brookfield Zoo's cat exhibits are bad. The are indoors but are good sized and most have natural substrate.
As for good cat exhibits Point Defiance's Clouded Leopard exhibit looks very good and Nashville looks vey good also.
 
Oregon Zoo's new caracal exhibit (with mongoose tunnel "enrichment") isn't too bad.

The pinnacle of small cat exhibition was attained in the 1970s at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, with its exquisitely-detailed "arroyo" exhibits for ocelot, jaguarundi, bobcat and margay. No one has done it better since....

Northwest Trek's bobcat exhibit is great too--open-topped, water moat, heavily wooded.
 
There are some fairly ordinary cat enclosures at Dortmund, but the lynx exhibit - basically a fenced-in piece of valley - is rather excellent. In the picture below, there is a lynx, but it is very hard to spot!
 

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Post number 9 above by reduakari sums it up for the United States. Although Small Cat Canyon still exists at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, it now only has two species of cats: ocelot and bobcat. (The jaguarundi exhibit now has gray fox and the margay exhibit now has porcupine). The small education nook still has the old signage about the four cats however.

Of course the best place for all cats, big and small, is the unsurpassed Le Parc Des Felins in France. If you really love cats you need to do whatever it takes to get yourself to France. They have multiple exhibits for many small cats, so if one group is sleeping the others may be awake.

The best cat complex currently in the US might be Memphis Zoo. Only a few small cats (ocelot, serval, caracal) but really nice exhibits.

The Living Desert has good exhibits for bobcat and caracal (though I heard recently caracals are not there?). Along with bad exhibits for arabian wildcat and sand cat.

Port Lympne recently opened the (no fence) pallas cat exhibit which by all appearances is quite good.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Overall, though, they get the shaft. I really need to become a millionaire so I can open my carnivore conservation center focusing especially on small cats and mustelids.
 
I liked the colection of South American cats at Chester Zoo around 1980: jaguarundi, pampas cat, Geoffroy's cat and margay. I also saw pampas cats at Kilverstone a couple of years later.
 
I've encountered this problem at the National Zoo. The fishing cat and clouded leopard have naturalistic, lush exhibits that are perfect for their privacy. But at the same time, it makes it hard for guests to spot them. There are many times I rush through Asia Trails because I cannot find any of the animals (and I do take the time to look a bit). But I think it also depends on the time of year. During my visit this month, whether the reduction of foliage was due to the season or the zoo intentionally did it, the male fishing cat was visible as was his whole exhibit. I also like the improvement they have done with the bigger fishing cat exhibit because they cut down a tree and there are vantage points to look down from behind their exhibit. I never knew they had that much space until this visit. So we get a sneak peak, but it's not too close for us to disturb the cats. Unless visitors are loud and obnoxious.

Out of all the small cats, I think I've paid the most attention to ocelot exhibits. Unfortunately from the zoos I have visited, more times than none I have found the exhibits not so great.
 
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